A chara, - I would like, in common with many Irish people, to proffer the refugees who have come to Ireland seeking a new home and a future with hope a "cead mile failte".
Many thousands of our people shared similarly sad experiences in comparatively recent times as they were forced to seek security in other lands. May today's refugees in Ireland share, in the near future, the success which many Irish people achieved in what became their new homelands.
I would ask those who now join us from abroad to confront the prejudices which they will meet, whether official or otherwise, not with hostility, but with a dignity born of all they know to be most admirable in their respective cultures. I believe that much of the antagonism with which they may be faced is rooted in the cultural ambivalence which still bedevils much of English-speaking-only Irishness rather than in the evil which is racism.
In a futuristic vein I would like to pre-thank today's refugees for the enrichment and the endowments with which they, their children and their children's children will enhance Irishness - that distinctiveness which marks us off from all other peoples. Yet, prism-like, our world should and could enjoy a multi-faceted unity of our shared humanness as it reflects the seamless, boundless beauty of God, of Allah.
Failte roimh isteach, bigi linn, big i i gcomhar linn, bigi mar chairde, mar chomhleacaithe agus mar chomharsana againn i saibhriu ar nEireannachais uile sa mhilaois romhainn. - Is mise, Colm O Torna,
Garran Ghleann Sceiche, Ard Aidhin, Baile Atha Cliath 5.